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Our Nightly Bread

By Frank Bruni March 23, 2007 5:35 pmMarch 23, 2007 5:35 pm

A couple of years ago, when diners in this city, like diners around the country, seemed to be as firmly and slavishly in the grip of carbo-phobia as possible, I feared for the fate of bread in restaurants.

It seemed to me at the time that I was noticing a perfunctory approach to many restaurants’ bread service, an acknowledgment on their parts that a fair share of their customers were shunning carbohydrates and weren’t really going to touch the stuff anyway.

I’m glad to report that my alarm was premature, or ill-founded, or unwarranted, or whatever. This hit me recently during visits to the restaurants Sfoglia and Varietal, each of which puts real pride in its bread making, with memorable results.

Varietal offers three kinds of bread at the beginning of a meal, and it’s one kind in particular that impressed me. It’s made by Jordan Kahn, the pastry chef, who gets very experimental and eccentric with the final act of the meal, by which I mean desserts, but much less so with this prelude.

The dough for this bread — a round-ish roll or, if you prefer, bun — has goat’s milk mixed in with organic all winter flour. Later on in the bread-making process Mr. Kahn adds sea salt, brown rice syrup and butter, and more butter is brushed onto the rolls when they come out of the oven. As is so often the case, when you’re wondering what makes something so good, the answer often includes butter.

But the goat’s milk is obviously a signature, pivotal ingredient here. Indeed, there’s a faint — but, crucially, very faint — tang to these rolls. Even more appealing, they have an incredibly soft texture, some magical midpoint between spongy and creamy.

Over at Sfoglia, as many critics, including me, have noted, the bread is a threat to the rest of the meal: you can easily get so absorbed in it, and consume so much of it, that you fail to save sufficient room for the pasta, as you most surely should. It’s unusual and quirky enough — and, possibly, variable enough — that I have acquaintances I respect who haven’t liked it.

I know more people who loved it. I did. The outside of it pushes the envelope on crunchy, sometimes shattering when you bite into it, and it’s often slightly burnt, in a way that’s not only appealing but also a terrific contrast to the interior, which is spectacularly fluffy and light. While it looks a bit like the peasant bread you get in many Italian restaurants, it tastes completely original.

And it was indeed the product of much thought and tinkering. The restaurant’s owners, Ron Suhanosky and Colleen Marnell-Suhanosky, spent some time studying the bread-making process at Balthazar and then devised their own recipe.

As I combed my mind for other memorable bread experiences during the last year of dining, I realized that at least one other bread shout-out was in order. It goes to L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon.

It’s funny: the first time I dined there, in its opening days, the bread wasn’t distinctive. The restaurant was having problems with its ovens and getting it from an outside bakery.

The situation was soon fixed, and L’Atelier was producing its petit baguettes in house, starting with a fermented mixture of Evian, apples, raisins and lemon juice, then adding rye flour in stages to make the dough. The whole process, according to the restaurant, takes nine days. The results are terrific.

I agree that great bread basket can set the tone for the entire meal – it’s rarely been the case that I’ve been to a restaurant with excellent bread and dissapointing food: I think of it as a meal -barometer and it’s often spot on.

The bread at sofigla is out standing as well as taboon. But by giving such good bread do you the chance of people over doing it on the bread and not ordering appetizers. Do any restaurants do a bread charge?

the breads at BLT Fish and BLT Fish Shack are awesome. The Cranberry Bread/Scone is so yummy that it comes with its recipe card, probably because many diners have asked for it.

Downstairs in the Fish Shack, they had this garlic bread which was a soft moist bread (like a big roll) with mashed garlic and butter and broiled so that the butter is melted and the aroma of the garlic is amazing.

at 5 Front restaurant in DUMBO they serve almondine’s lauded baguettes before/with the meal. amazing i thought. i dont care too much for the food itself there (i keep trying and am just not thrilled is all), but just having access to those baguettes is magical for me.

Let’s not forget, please, to mention Subway. Not all of us NY Times readers are rich, you know. I can’t afford to eat at the places Frank writes about. So for me, one of the great joys of restaurant dining is the freshly baked baguettes they make Subway sandwiches out of!

To MM. Please don’t mention Subway again. While I do eat there from time to time for a quick veggie sandwich, their bread is terrible. Just because it’s “fresh baked” doesn’t mean it’s good. The recipe and care still needs effort. The bread is too soft and lacks any kind of resistance or crumb that all good bread should have.

Additions of Evian and lemon juice notwithstanding, I have a simple plea to all restaurants–please heat the bread before serving it. Heating makes crappy bread palatable and good bread unforgettable. (Yes, I realize that there may be, on occasion, a time when bread ought not to be served warm, but this, in my opinion, is the exception, not the rule. )

Bread is among the first food impression one receives at a restaurant. That said, I find myself in good mood when I find that much thought and effort has gone into bread making. Why? Because when a good amount of energy is put into creating a complimentary pre-starter, I notice that the upcoming dishes tend to be created with equal amount, if not more, thought and effort (perhaps the chef does not want a pastry chef’s loaves of bread to outshine his dishes? or perhaps it’s because when the standard for bread making is set high so are the standards for dishes?)

Superb, one-of-a-kind bread is not merely a complimentary pre-starter; it has the power to create lasting impressions.

Okay, I’d rather eat bread than just about anything, including a choc chip cookie right from the oven (yes, amazing, but true). But people, ow about those oversized sweet steamy rolls you get in a Chinese restaurant? With about a quarter cup of butter, running down your hands and face? OMG!!!

Nice bread baskets at:
1) Spring Street Natural-the corn bread and sesame wafers are addictive. I just wish the breads were more consistently warm.
2) EAT’S, of course, on Madison Avenue, is just about the best, and almost makes the outrageous prices you will pay for the meal worth it.